The Best Treatment For Drug Addicts Is Community

CJ Arlotta
, ContributorI cover end-of-life care and dabble in the culture of medicine.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Being alone could be the worst possible scenario for those suffering from drug addiction. Without any outside help, these individuals remain chained to their environment, which unfortunately makes it difficult for them to resist temptation. By working together, controlled substance abusers can find the path to sobriety.

Lead author Leonard Jason, a community psychologist at DePaul University, said in an interview that community-based substance abuse housing can greatly assist individuals who are homeless, have been processed through the criminal justice system, and have been diagnosed with a number of health and psychiatric disorders.

“Many of those who enter these housing situations are bereft of friends and income sources, as well as safe housing,” he said. “If you ask people leaving jails and prisons, what they need, it is often safe housing and job opportunities; and both are usually hard to find. So, yes, supportive housing is important, and we need more of it, and more research to understand how it works.”

Researchers tested their own systems-based theory -- which they believe explains how house residents with recovery-related attitudes, behaviors and social relationships co-evolve -- on residents living in substance abuse recovery homes operating under the Oxford House, an approach to addiction treatment that’s primarily community-based. There are now nearly 2,000 Oxford Houses across the United States.

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The effectiveness of a collaborative housing setting doesn’t depend on the substance an individual is recovering from, noted Jason.

“Just getting people clean and releasing them to the social environments that helped encourage the substance use and other negative behaviors (such as crime) has been shown to be not effective,” he said.

For some addicts, living in community-based housing isn’t a pleasurable experience. In fact, some of these substance abuse recovery facilities have less than desirable conditions (e.g., overcrowding).

“These types of unsupervised wet houses and settings that are filled with non-working people can be a real problem for the residents as well as those that live in the neighborhoods,” he said.

The study’s researchers are confident that the report’s findings will help limit increasing health care costs by improving the residential recovery home system in the country.

“There needs to be closer integration of substance use treatment facilities and the types of community supports that have been shown to be effective,” Jason said.

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